Background: Connectives, such as "because" or "although," explicitly indicate how to semantically link individual segments of a text. Knowledge of connectives has been shown to significantly contribute to variance explanation in comprehension of English and Dutch texts, particularly amongst monolingual students and students…

Strong oral reading fluency skills are an important indication of good reading. In addition, reading engagement is often correlated with reading success. Unfortunately, students with learning disabilities (LD) often struggle to read fluently and engage with text. Incorporating graphic novels as part of a comprehensive reading program may help…

Academic vocabulary is the specialized language used to communicate within academic settings. The Coxhead (2000) taxonomy is one such list that identifies 570 headwords representing academic vocabulary. Researchers have hypothesized that students possessing greater fluent reading skills are more likely to benefit from exposure to vocabulary due to…

This study leverages advances in multivariate cross-classified random effects models to extend the Simple View of Reading to account for variation within readers and across texts, allowing for both the personalization of the reading function and the integration of the component skills and text and discourse frameworks for reading research. We…

Educators have been faced with increasing demands to not only achieve, but also improve reading scores across the nation. Educational research of literacy abilities and reading achievement performance on state assessments have been researched and documented for decades. However, there has been little research on middle school literacy and state…

Numerous studies have supported the simple view of reading by showing the significant predictive roles of oral language comprehension ability and decoding skills in the reading comprehension of monolinguals and second language learners. However, little is known about its applicability to young foreign language learners who do not have much access…

Guided reading (GR) approach has been shown to have positive effect on reading fluency and comprehension. However, most studies on GR have focused on primary schools, specifically the Foundation Phase. Therefore, this study employed the GR approach to examine its possible effects on the reading proficiencies of Grade 9 English Second Language…

"Xtreme Reading" is a supplemental literacy curriculum designed to improve the literacy skills of struggling students in grades 6 to 12. The curriculum is primarily designed to help students improve their vocabulary, decoding, fluency, and reading comprehension skills. To ensure a productive learning environment, students initially learn…

English learners with learning disabilities (LD) have well-documented difficulties comprehending text. This study examined the effects of an intensive reading intervention (Reading Intervention for Adolescents [RIA]) on reading outcomes (word reading, vocabulary, and comprehension) for ninth-grade ELs with LD (n = 85). In the RIA, students…

Middle-school students completed a comprehension assessment. The following day, they read four, 120-word passages, two standard and two non-standard ransom-note passages with altered font sizes. Altering font sizes increased students' reading time (i.e., reduced reading speed) by an average of 3 s and decreased students' words correct per minute…

The present study evaluated the extent to which literacy skills (reading fluency, written spelling, and reading comprehension), together with nonverbal reasoning, prior knowledge, and gender, are related to students' online research and comprehension (ORC) performance. The ORC skills of 426 sixth graders were measured using a Finnish adaptation of…

By the time students enter the fourth grade, it is expected that they possess the basic literacy skills needed to read and learn content. It is the general belief that in the early grades, students are taught foundational literacy skills that make them proficient readers by the time they become adolescent learners. For many, this assumption is…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between oral language, literacy skills, age, and dialect density (DD) of African American children residing in two different geographical regions of the United States (East Coast and Midwest). Method: Data were obtained from 64 African American school-age children between the…

By the end of primary school, students are confronted with expository texts known for their high proportion of domain-specific academic vocabulary words. These words usually comprise Greek or Latin roots in their internal structure. Recent findings showed that knowledge of Greek and Latin roots is related to reading comprehension. However, no…

"Xtreme Reading" is a supplemental literacy curriculum designed to improve the literacy skills of struggling students in grades 6 to 12. The curriculum is primarily designed to help students improve their vocabulary, decoding, fluency, and reading comprehension skills. To ensure a productive learning environment, students initially learn…